The potter’s art was probably entirely unknown to Palæolithic Man, for in none of the pure Drift finds have fragments of clay vessels been found. So where clay vessels or fragments of them occur, they appear as the proof of a post-Drift period. On the other hand, pottery was quite general in the Neolithic Age of Europe. Still, the need of clay vessels is not general among all races of the earth even at the present day; up to modern times there were, and still are, races and tribes without pots. From their practices it is evident that the European Stone men of the Drift could also manage to prepare their food, chiefly meat, by fire without cooking vessels. The Fuegians lay the piece of meat to be roasted on the glowing embers of a dying wood fire, and turn it with a pointed forked branch so as to keep it from burning. Meat thus prepared is very tasty, as it retains all the juice and only gets a rind on the top, and the ashes that adhere to it serve as seasoning in lieu of salt. On a coal fire not only can fish be grilled, stuck on wooden rods, but whole sheep can be roasted on wooden spits, precisely as people have the dainty of roast mutton in the East. To these may be added a large number of other methods of roasting, and even boiling, without earthen or metal vessels, which are partly vouched for by ethnography and partly by archæology, and some of which, like the so-called “stone-boiling,” are still practised at the present day. [Sidenote: No Perfect Pottery in the Stone Age] Although, according to this, pottery is not an absolute necessary of life for man, yet it is certain that even those poorly equipped pioneers who first settled in Denmark in the Pine Period, in spite of their having an almost or quite exclusive meat fare, had clay pottery in general use for preparing their food, and probably also for storing their provisions. As we have already shown, the remains that have been preserved in the kitchen-middens are the oldest that have been found in Denmark. Simple and rude as the numerous potsherds that occur may appear, they are of the highest importance on account of the proof of their great age. Unfortunately, as we have already seen, not a single perfect vessel has come to light. The fragments are very thick, of rough clay with bits of granite worked in, and are all made by hand without the use of the potter’s wheel. The pieces partly indicate large vessels, some with flat bottoms, and others with the special characteristic of pointed bottoms, so that the vessel could not be stood up as it was. Smaller bowls, frequently of an oval form, also occurred with rounded bottoms, so that they also could not stand by themselves. It is very important to note that on these fragments of pottery we find only extraordinarily scanty and exceedingly simple ornamental decorations, consisting merely of incisions, or impressions made with the fingers, on the upper edge. [Illustration: MAN’S FIGHT WITH THE GIANT ANIMALS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD